15 Mar
2006
15 Mar
'06
12:24 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Jim Leonard wrote:
As I said a couple of weeks ago, there's *no* archival media that's
exempt from that kind of obsolescence.
Archive it, TEST IT, duplicate it on different media, test *that*,
and migrate often.
CPU speed and blank DVDrs are cheap enough
nowadays that this adds 1%
of effort to a process that gives me 3-4x more reliability.
... until you find a few years down the line that your burner was
producing CDs that refuse to work in any of the hardware you can now lay
your hands on. The media may be ok, but it's only as good as the
thing you're trying to
read it in - and experience has been that there's a huge amount of
incompatibility out there :-(
It's possible to create a near-fault-proof data storage procedure.
As most anything else, you do a balancing act between time, expense, and
portability. If you're willing to put a lot of money in it, you can
almost totally automate things. If you're willing to spend lots of
hours soing the archival, you can do it nearly free. Making it
platform-independent adds either time or money or both.
Doc